The shame of Darfur continues

“Dithering Through Death” is the title of Nicholas Kristof’s Op-Ed column in the 5/16/06 issue of The New York Times. He says:

For those of us who admire the United Nations, there is an uncomfortable reality to grapple with: The U.N. has put barely a speed bump in the path to genocide in Darfur. The U.N. has been just as ineffective there for the last three years as it was during the slaughter in Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia. Once again, it rolled over...The sad fact is that the U.N. is a wimp. It publishes fine reports and is terrific at handing out food and organizing vaccination campaigns, but the General Assembly and the Security Council routinely doze through crimes against humanity...the U.N. has regularly failed abysmally in situations like the one in Darfur, when military intervention is needed but a major power (in this case China) uses the threat of a veto to block action.

An article in the Times two days earlier (5/14/06) by reporter Lydia Polgreen describes the continuing rampage of the janjaweed thugs in Darfur–she recounts just one bloody incident:

Three men with machine guns stopped (a) truck on the road and fired into its cabin, shooting the driver and blowing out the tires...the raiders set upon the women, raping them in turn, witnesses said.

The reporter adds that one woman was killed, six villagers were wounded , and fifteen women were raped. She goes on:

These atrocities occur even when police and military personnel are nearby but rarely respond. ...protecting from the attacks of the militias (the janjaweed) is the job of the police, but they seldom respond...African Union troops occasionally patrol the area, but their narrow mandate calls for them to monitor, not enforce, the 2004 cease-fire.

All of this deplorable mayhem goes on while terms of another peace treaty between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the Darfur rebel groups are supposedly being worked out. It seems that Khartoum’s game is to make it appear that, by making small incremental movements, it is working toward a genuine end to the genocide; in fact, however, its real intent is to temporize so that it can continue the depredations in Darfur.

I attended the 4/30/06 rally at the National Mall in Washington to support stopping the Darfur genocide. One report said that over 50,000 people were there; a long mixed bag of speakers (clergy of all faiths, politicians, media people, victims of the Darfur atrocities, victims of the Jewish holocaust, and others) expressed their outrage at the situation.

The most pragmatic proposals were that military intervention is needed now. Dick Gregory, the black comedian, said he was going to fast until there was such action; the leader of a Jewish group said that his organization was going to call on most of the European and African embassies in Washington to urge their countries to participate in such action.

One can only regret that our government could invade Iraq on the pretext that it was to protect our national interest while, at the same time, only “dither” (to use Nicholas Kristof’s word) in regard to Darfur (dithering is about all that we can do with so much of our military force engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan). How about our moral interest?

I have done all that I know how to support action NOW to stop this horrible situation. Besides two previous postings on this blog about it and attending the Washington rally, my wife and I have sent letters to President Bush, our two U.S. senators from Maryland and to the congressman from our district urging such action. (Ironically, Senator Paul Sarbanes, who is to retire from the Senate at the end of his term this year, was the first to respond to our letter; Senator Barbara Mikulski, who still has time left on her term, was next; but Congressman Ben Cardin, who is running for the Senate this year (to replace Sarbanes) and who needs our support the most–and who has fewer constituents than the two senators, who represent the whole state of Maryland, has yet to respond.)